Tag Archives: writer: ursula vernon

Hugo Novellas 2025

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2025 Hugos: Goodreads / Librarything stats | Novel | Novella | Novelette | Short Story | Graphic Story or Comic | Related Work | Dramatic Presentation, Long and Short | Fancast | Poem | Lodestar | Astounding

Now that I have been unexpectedly liberated to discuss my Hugo votes, here they are in the first category that I completed. These are all good, by the way, and I found it quite difficult to rank them. (This is not the case for every category.)

6) The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain by Sofia Samatar. Second paragraph of third chapter:

“Okay,” said Dr. Marjorie. “That’s it. You’re on your own.”

Generation starship where slaves v masters plays into a brutal take on academia. Get it here.

5) The Tusks of Extinction by Ray Nayler. Second paragraph of third chapter:

“People report different things. Some say they feel nothing at all. Others say the scan brings up memories. That it somehow brushes up against them and brings them back to consciousness. They see their lives. Memory by memory, before them.”

Mammoth researchers upload the mind of a long-dead mammoth expert into the brain of a resurrected mammoth. Get it here.

4) What Feasts at Night by T. Kingfisher. Second paragraph of third chapter:

It occurs to me that you may think that I am making a great deal of nothing about traveling, granted that I had spent much of my youth gallivanting across Europe, sometimes while being shot at. Possibly you’re right. All I can say in my defense is that while I was in the army, no matter where we went, we had a routine. We got up, we ate bad food, we complained, we tended the horses, we were extremely bored, we ate again, we went to sleep. Occasionally we would go somewhere else and be bored there. Once in a very great while, we would spend an absolutely nerve-wracking few hours, and afterward we would be shaky and bored, but in general, the routine reigned supreme.

Haunted holiday cottage in fictional but richly realised European country. Get it here.

3) The Brides of High Hill by Nghi Vo. Second paragraph of third chapter:

“Oh, get up, get up, please,” Nhung begged.

Something sinister is up with the arranged wedding that Cleric Chih gets involved with. Get it here.

2) The Butcher of the Forest by Premee Mohamed. Second paragraph of third chapter:

“No,” Veris said, glancing back at the handful of guards waiting silently in the front garden. A few had also crept to the back, she knew, to guard the door in case she still, unthinkably, tried to escape.

Only the heroine can rescue two children who have been kidnapped by a monster. Get it here.

1) Navigational Entanglements by Aliette de Bodard. Second paragraph of third chapter:

As to the others… Bảo Duy was endearing but reckless, and Lành was extremely difficult to deal with or protect, which added to the annoyance.

A lovely dark story about four young women thrown together to ward off the unspeakable. In space. Get it here.

I intend to do these collages of covers for each of the relevant Hugo categories. I do them by hand using PowerPoint and Paint, without use of AI.






The Hollow Places, by T. Kingfisher

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

When we closed up at six, he’d say, “Good job today, Carrot. Don’t know what I did without you.” Then he would go home and I would go next door to the coffee shop and leech on the Wi-Fi. If I could think of something fun to say, I’d update the museum’s social media. I had grandiose visions of overhauling the web page and doing more with it than the occasional blog post about the history of Feejee Mermaids, but I hadn’t quite gotten there yet. And you had to be careful when you posted pictures of skulls and taxidermy because there were always people who wanted to tell you that this made you a murderer and the moral equivalent of Ed Gein. My internet armor had been built up in the fanfic battlegrounds and was thus impenetrable, but Uncle Earl was a gentle soul, and I was afraid that someone might hurt his feelings.

One of Ursula Vernon’s books that I had somehow missed, this is about a young woman, recovering from divorce, looking after her uncle’s Wonder Museum and then discovering, together with the gay barista next door, that through a hole in the museum’s wall they have access to numerous other dimensions where Bad Things happen and other Bad Things live and they need to keep our world safe. It’s funny and scary, and the characters are very believably delineated. Another good one. You can get it here.